Khanty-Mansiysk Final: Kamsky wins, to challenge Topalov

12/16/2007 – American GM Gata Kamsky has won the FIDE World Cup. In the fourth game he was able to force a perpetual check and hold Alexei Shirov to a draw, which meant that he had won the Final with a score of 2.5:1.5 (three draws, one win). Kamsky won, did not lose a single game and performed 102 points higher than his nominal 2714 rating. Congratulations Gata!

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A total of 126 participants turned up on November 23 for the World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk,
Russia, located about 1400 miles (2250 km) east of Moscow. The competition is
taking place from November 24 to December 18.

Name

Nat

Rtng

G1

G2

G3

G4

Tot.

Shirov, Alexei

ESP

2739

½

0

½

½

1.5

Kamsky, Gata

USA

2714

½

1

½

½

2.5

Round seven (Final) Game four – Sunday, December 16th

On move 27 Kamsky sacrificed an exchange for a passed pawn on the e-file. On
move 31 Black gained an additional pawn, but Black could advance his pawn to
e7 and force an immediate draw by perpetual check. The final score was 2.5:1.5
for the American GM, who had drawn three games and won one. Congratulations
to Gata Kamsky, who temporarily retired from chess to study medicine and law,
but who has now staged an incredible comeback and will occupy the attention
of the chess world for many years to come.

Originally the winner of the FIDE World Cup was supposed to challenge the reigning
World Champion, but in a
special edict delivered last June FIDE decided that the winner had to play
former FIDE world champion Veselin Topalov first. The winner of that match then
gets to play for the world championship title against the winner of the match
Anand vs Kramnik, scheduled for October 2008. The match Kamsky vs Topalov is expected to
take place after the Anand-Kramnik world championship.

A number of readers have suggested that the Kamsky-Topalov match could become
really exciting if the American reactivates his famously belligerent father
Rustam, to counter the activities of Topalov's manager Silvio Danailov. "That
would be a wonderfully thrilling matchup," wrote one wag, "with explosive
off-the-board play. We look forward to daily blow-by-blow reports on your news
page."

Picture gallery

Sunday and the final game of the FIDE World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk

Alexei Shirov ponders before moving 5...Nf6

The battle on the stage with the trophy in the foreground

Alexei Shirov and Gata Kamsky in their final encounter

In focus: the trophy which the winner gets to take home

Gata can hardly believe it: I've won the FIDE World Cup!

What could I do, you forced the draw... Shirov and Kamsky after the game

Statistics

In Khanty Mansiysk Gata Kamsky played a total of 18 games, 16 at regular time
controls and two rapid chess tiebreak games (against Peter Svidler). He lost
none of his games, won six regular games and one tiebreak game to win the FIDE
World Cup 2007. A very economic effort. But what about his performance. We consult
ChessBase (the program) and get the following for the regular games:

We see that his performance in this tournament, against opponents averaging
2679 rating points, was a tremendous 2816. For the uninitiated: this means that
we could expect the performance Kamsky displayed from a player rated 2816, statistically
speaking. His actual rating is 2714, so he was playing 102 points better than
his nominal rating on the FIDE list. In the next list he will be rated higher,
though we have not yet projected how many points he will gain (just 15 day before
the new FIDE rating list appears).

Incidentally, if you evaluate all 18 games he played, including the two rapid
ones against Svidler, Kamsky performed at a level of 2822, with seven wins,
11 draws and no losses.

All games and final table

tables of this 128-player event are too large to show normally, so we have
made a reduced, scrollable version for you. Firefox users will need to click
the image to enlarge it to the intended size.

You can also view the original table if your browser and your monitor allow
you to:

See also

12/30/2017 – The "King Salman World Blitz & Rapid Championships 2017" in Riyadh from Decemer 26th to 30th. At the half way point of the Blitz Championship, the defending champ Sergey Karjakin leads with 9 / 11. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is a half point back followed by Peter Svidler and a trio of Chinese: Wang, Ding and Yu on 8 / 11. In the Women's Pia Cramling has a full point lead with 9½ / 11. Watch live with Rounds 11 to 22 from 12:00 Noon CET (6:00 AM EST) on Saturday with commentary by E. Miroshnichenko & WGM K. Tsatsalashvili.

See also

12/6/2017 – Imagine this: you tell a computer system how the pieces move — nothing more. Then you tell it to learn to play the game. And a day later — yes, just 24 hours — it has figured it out to the level that beats the strongest programs in the world convincingly! DeepMind, the company that recently created the strongest Go program in the world, turned its attention to chess, and came up with this spectacular result.

Video

Former World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik liked to play the French and once described it as a 'difficult and dangerous opening'. But in this 60 minutes video IM Andrew Martin suggests an aggressive and little-used idea of the renowned attacking player GM Viktor Kupreichik to counter the French: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Be3!?. Andrew Martin uses the games of Kupreichik to show why this line could catch many French aficionados unprepared and is very dangerous for Black. Attacking players will love this line and the unusual complications that it promotes.